More intriguing, however, is Walker’s argument that Thoreau may have associated “life in the woods” with a phase of life known in Hindu as “vanaprastha” (literally translated as “life in the woods”)-“the third stage of life-that of the solitary, contemplative hermit living in the forest on the outskirts of the village-as described in The Laws of Manu” (14) which Thoreau read in Emerson’s library in 1840. Walker grants that Thoreau may have used the title “ironically,” that is, “as a vigorous rejoinder to the thesis of Lane’s Dial essay” (13). Walker offers a new interpretation of Walden’s 1854 subtitle, “Life in the Woods.” It is well known that that subtitle was hardly original, having appeared in several publications prior to the publication of Walden, including an article of that name by Charles Lane which appears in the final issue of The Dial. In his new book, Cryptic Subtexts in Literature and Film: Secret Messages and Buried Treasure (New York: Routledge, 2019), Steven F. Kurtz is one o the most straightforward analyses of W’s style. For a discussion of the organic structure of W, see Lane (1960). Headley (New York, 1849), which did not appear until after T had used the subtitle in an advertisement for W in the back pages of the first edition of A Week. For a comprehensive study of the types of books on which T based the structure of W, see Linck Johnson.

Williams, “Our Cabin or, Life in the Woods” in the October 1843 American Pioneer (DeMott), but not from the then popular The Adirondack or Life in the Woods, by J.T. T could have derived the subtitle from his friend Charles Lane’s essay “Life in the Woods” in the Dial (IV, 1844, 415) or from John S. Paul (75) suggests that T may have dropped the subtitle because he feared his audience was taking it too literally and thus missing the more important philosophy permeating the book. They complied with this request, although it has rarely been followed since. Although the first edition gives the title Walden or, Life in the Woods, on March 4, 1862, two months before he died, T wrote to his publishers, Ticknor & Fields, asking them to omit the subtitle in a new edition.

Henry thoreau walden